Waxing Nostalgic
Sep 20th, 2007 by Kristi
I remember very few things about my high school experience. Which is strange…I’m only 31. I think I have amnesia. All I can remember are the speech tournaments and play rehearsals and choreographing awesome dances with my bff. I didn’t even buy a yearbook my senior year, which totally sucks because I don’t know who anyone is on the GO STINGS myspace page. And also unfortunate because I missed out on owning the page in the yearbook featuring me and aforementioned friend at prom, right next to a very special picture of some very ’special students’ (aka mentally handi-capable) dancing at the prom. The effect of the page, if I remember it correctly, was ‘And here are our school’s very special students! Look at them! They are just like you! LOOK AT THEM!!!!!’
Wow…that memory just came back in flood. Give me a moment.
I remember perceived jilts and rivalries, typical adolescent girl stuff. And I remember unrequited crushes and writing notes to friends, then having other friends fold them into triangular pockets because I could never remember how to fold them. Folding notes was very important in high school for some reason. Also important: those little one-piece shorts/dresses things girls were wearing back then.
By the end of my senior year, I was counting down the days until it was time to leave. I didn’t do senior pictures or buy a senior ring. I didn’t do senior parties or trips. Any sentimentality I may have possessed was as stale as as a pair of 1987 Guess jeans. I just graduated and left.
So now that I’ve reconnected with a few old high school friends via myspace, it has occurred to me how strongly I’m still linked to my hometown and the people I knew there. Even though I couldn’t wait to leave, and even though I’m quite sure I’ll never live there again. Will doesn’t understand this connection, as he was a Air Force brat and never lived in any place longer than three years. Then again, there are plenty of things about me that Will doesn’t understand. Like how I can watch Waiting for Guffman over and over again, and still laugh every time.
The first month that we moved up here, I met a girl from my hometown. Here were were, fifty miles from Canada, hailing from the same town a few miles north of Mexico. After comparing notes it became clear that she had no affection for the place. At all. She literally sneered when I asked if she ever got down there.
So what is it about our hometowns that inspires this range of emotions? Disdain, affection, complacency…the whole range is there when I correspond with friends and family about Victoria. As for me, I was just ready to see new places. And to be away from the social and economic burdens that come from being poor. So college was a fresh start, where I felt I was on equal footing with everyone around me. And I thrived.
Now that I’m here in Idaho, I’m reminded by my myspace buddies that ex-classmates are reading this blog daily. People I knew in junior high, even elementary school, will read this entry tomorrow. DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?
Mine neither. Here’s my point:
Notice how I left that blank. I don’t have a point. Hometowns: good or bad? Discuss.
powered by PostHive
my parents were poor so we moved a lot. but when i run into people from my *hometown,* aka the town i lived in when i was in high school, i do get nostaligic. i won’t ever move back, but i do feel a sense of longing when i do visit. every time we’re there i hope to run into people that i knew back then, but everyone has moved away. well, my friends parents still live there, but i’m not wanting to go hang out with mrs robison…
my husband hails from a hick town in northern nevada (the term to denote ANY part of nevada other than las vegas). there are 300 people there. the closest walmart may well be the one down the street from us here, 220 miles from his hometown. i hate the place. i LOVE his family. but i hate his hometown. the same town he’d like to move to someday when we’re rich and he’s writing books instead of selling parts in the petroleum transport industry…
I remember too much about high school. Maybe because I graduated with a class of SEVEN.
Both.
The thing about hometowns is that you don’t choose them (usually), and yet they become an intricate part of who you are, whether we like it or not. Your hometown is like your family - there through the formative years, influencing you whether you like it or not, the backdrop to your memories - and the thing many of us feel a cellular level need to rebel against when we are trying to figure out Who We Are.
Of course… I say all this having just moved 1400 miles away from my hometown. And suddenly feeling desperate to find a connection to it.
Well done, Miss Britt. You wrote what I was trying to say. Perfect.
Hometowns are like families, you didn’t necessarily choose them, like you would friends, sometimes they can be embarrassing, but none the less you love them and they bring you comfort even if they have their flaws.
I moved BACK to my hometown. What a great idea that was…. (actually, it’s pretty nice.)
High school, though, was pretty awful. But high school didn’t occur in my hometown - my hometown isn’t big enough to have a high school.
True dat… True dat. Home towns are good and bad. I get nostalgic but never want to move back. My school was so small that there were 60 people in my class, and this school had the 10 surrounding towns going to it too. Crazy kids!!!
Hmmm. I wanted to get away too, and I rarely go back , but now I like connecting with folks from there. Some people changed dramatically and some not at all. I never belonged in that town for good, but sometimes I wish I did.
Well, I still live in my hometown if you can believe that. My kids go to the elementary school I went to. My daughter is in the same EXACT kindergarten class I was in. In fact, she might even be sitting in the same exact chair.
I live on the same street as I did growing up (different house, but you know…). Ironically, I NEVER see anyone from high school and I really have no intention of ever going to a reunion. I liked high school, had great friends in high school, but have no desire to re-visit high school. And if I can be in the same hometown but not have to re-live it, then I’m OK.
prepare yourself to have your mind blown…..
you live in my hometown that i left and often wax nostalgic about, even though i left there at the age of eight to move to montana, where i got another hometown that i wax nostalgic about.
i live far far away from all my hometowns, but i still wonder about the people that i didn’t give less than a shit about at the time i was growing up in northern idaho and montana. damn human condition.
My mind is officially blown. Sandpoint is such a small town. I imagine it would be a great place to grow up, with the lake and the mountain. But it’s still small enough to want to escape.
Everybody needs a hometown. I mean, you’ve got to be from SOME PLACE. I have fond memories of my hometown. It was 7,000 then. Now it’s about 80,000, so I don’t think I’d like to live there anymore.
I high tailed it away from my hometown the day I went to college. And never turned back. Until I started looking around for people who shared the same life experience as me. And I was 1000 miles away from them.
It is on the cellular level.
Namaste.
I lived in California where “hometowns” are pretty huge. I’m a city girl so the neighbors “kind of” knew each other but for the most part, everyone was pretty anonymous. Our high school was a small city compared to my hubby’s high school. I remember him saying to me, “You didn’t know everyone in your graduating class?”
Um. no. I can’t remember 500 people’s names!
So no, I’m not attached to my hometown at all…sure there are places that strike some nostalgia like the yummy hole in the wall restaurant we used to go to to get a big pile of chili fries, or the movie theater that I went on for my first date..except oops, that’s gone and replaced with a Kohls.
I think I consider where I lived after college (San Diego) more of my hometown than I do my actual hometown.
Jacksonville, FL. I love my hometown. I miss my hometown. I moved to the other side of the country to get away from my hometown and I will NEVER EVER EVER return. Why this is, I do not know, because I enjoy every visit back there. I can only tell you this: I HATE YOU AND YOUR ASS FACE!!!!!!
I, too left my hometown as soon as I was able and at 51 years of age still miss it. It’s not the hometown I miss, it’s the memories. It’s having other people around me who were there and can share those memories with me. I would love to be able to go to the old tree and see if myname is still there. I would love to sit and talk whith people who went through the segregation experience. I would like to know which of the guys that left high school and went straight to Viet nam made it back or to see my friends’ children. Even though I’ve been away for almost 30 years, it’s still my hometown. It’s where I grew up. It’s where my childhood is. It’s where my memories both good and bad are. It’s as much a part of me as my hand or foot and it always will be. But i would never move back. It could never be the same as it was then.
I am all about the hometowns. I’m from a village of 300, went to school in a town of 6500. My parents and grandparents and numerous relatives still live there. Now that I have a family, I am itching for a place to call home again. Haven’t found it yet, though.
I only run into former classmates when I look like hell and my child is running amuck and I am shouting after her.
I say, grab your Remains of the Day lunchbox and be glad you’re not me!
Being from Victoria, I can TOTALLY understand the push and pull the town exerts on you. So many of us felt the same way after high school - “WHEN can I get the HELL out of this place?!” Of course, I’ve never gotten more than 2 hours away. And now, after being gone 11 years, it’s pulling me back again. I loved - LOVED - living in Corpus Christi and now love Austin as well, but I think it’s friends and family (both Chad’s and mine) that make a move home feel very comforting. My 18-year old self would kick my butt if she heard me say that. But I do find it very comforting to hang out in the park like we did when I was little, or shop at (some of) the same stores, or drive by my old junior high, where my best friend’s husband is now a teacher and coach.
My Hometown wasn’t that small and I still have friends who have a life there and other friends who are only there at the same times I am - holidays and such. My parents are getting near retirement and considering moving to a new town. I would be devastated not to have a ‘reason’ to go back there!
Depending on one’s growing up experiences in their Hometown, I can understand some peoples’ hatred though…..and there are some ‘Hometowns’ I can think of that I would absolutely have loathed growing up in!